Tea at Trianon: Darwin and Intelligent Design

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Darwin and Intelligent Design

From The Atlantic:

The ferocity of the debate makes it difficult to remember that, at one point not so long ago in geological time, religion and science weren't all that distinct. In the late 1600s and early 1700s, intelligent design — the belief that you could find God's hand by examining creation — was seen as a way to glorify both God and the ordered laws of physics revealed by Newton....

Intelligent design wasn't something invented after Darwin to oppose him; rather, it was the context for, and a building block of, his work. Intelligent design, then, is not some sort of anti-science, know-nothing idiocy. It's an important part of the history of science, and a necessary link in the development of Darwin's elegant theory of evolution. If birds are dinosaurs, Bill Nye is an intelligent design theologian. (Read more.)

PV said...: The complexity and beauty of our world cannot be the product of mere chance. It can be demonstrated mathematically. Actually it was demonstrated mathematically.
The problem is that many scientists cling to the idea of evolution (without God). Check this article:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13663-evolution-myths-the-bacterial-flagellum-is-irreducibly-complex.html#.UxXssl7D7tw.
The conclusion is simply ridiculous:
"Evolution is cleverer than you are." :-)). So now chance is clever!; March 4, 2014 at 10:16:00 AM EST